Stats
👣 Miles: 19.89
📈 Elevation Gain: 1,719 ft
📉 Elevation Loss: 2,477 ft
Overall Weather: Partly Cloudy & Warm ➡️ Sunny & Hot
Morning Miles
We started the day off finishing the shitshow “old mining road” that became a “trail.” Neither of us could find it, so we gave up and headed toward a mountain in the distance that went generally where we needed to go.
BT succeeded in keeping us away from the National Park crowd for the most part.
After so many washes, I couldn’t tell if I’d rather face annoying people and have a good trail or continue in washes without annoying people.
We continued into some areas that clearly had foot traffic, but not a lot of it. Since there were no signs, only people who knew vaguely how to navigate explored there.
The National Park People
Eventually, the inevitable happened. The quiet piles of rocks we walked near and scrambled over dumped us onto a legit trail. The signs for it even had etched maps included on them.
I could smell them when they passed us, going the opposite way from at least 10 feet away. Their soaps and detergents made me cough.
I’m sure they could smell us almost three weeks after a shower as well. We decided that if any of them started talking to us too long, we just needed to air our armpits instead of containing them at our sides. However, no one tried talking to us for too long, so we never got to test that theory.
Not even the backcountry ranger wanted to chat long. He stopped to chat for a quick second, didn’t ask for our permit, and quickly went on his way.
Most interactions seemed to go like that.
The “boy scout” area of the park had the most people.
The Yucca Valley Connector
Finally, we turned left to do bonus miles on the route. This took us off a popular trail and onto a less popular one (at least fit a moment.)
Technically, this route ended a few miles further on the boy scout trailhead. However, we want to tag the PCT. Onward we go!
BT connected a bunch of mismatched day hikes to bring us toward the west entrance of the park.
After some single track that seemed to have a mind of its own, we sidetracked to the west entrance bathrooms.
Well, the bathrooms were the bonus. The main reason was to get water. Those spigots would be our only water for the day (besides a sad Tinaja a while back). Conveniently, they also had trash cans so we could ditch the gallons that we cached, food wrappers, and dirty TP that we packed out.
The rangers there only smiled and waved at us. One was busy trying to tell a bro in a Mercedes convertible that they didn’t take cash as he was trying to pay the entrance fee with a $100 bill. The ranger was trying to say they didn’t accept cash about 4 different ways. I couldn’t help bursting out laughing and the rangers clearly had to work to not laugh as well.
No-Quota Zone Camp
After grabbing enough water for the rest of the evening and a little over half a day tomorrow, we headed out.
Our permit allowed us to camp within a 4-mile area. Easy enough.
We went straight west into the setting sun. Our goal was to get about halfway into that area so we’d have fewer miles into town.
We succeeded and sat down to cook our dehydrated meal, listen to a podcast, and get some much-needed sleep.